Many of Ative Rain bloggers have discussed the current real estate market and submitted DOM as well as current pricing and sold pricing in each of our areas. This morning on the MLS for the Sacramento and surrounding areas in California, there is a "new" entry that a listing Realtor can now take advantage of. It is called "On Market Date" referred to as OMD.

There are some great attributes to this, in that if a seller's property is not properly prepared for showing but the listing agent wants to get the listing without penalizing the seller with the  accured count of days on market, this is a great tool. The listing broker's office and the MLS staff would be exclusive to seeing this listing until the date that the listing realtor submits the property is ready for showing. Rules for this are that no marketing of the listing is allowed and if so, would warrant a $250 fine. However, a realtor who knows that the listing is being marketed and is not in MLS would be the only venue to pursue this. Since, there is the possibility that the seller may have signed a form not to be placed in MLS, this presents yet another obstacle. Not sure how this can easily be enforced but can certainly be abused. The OMD may not exceed 45 days nor be equal to the expiration date of the listing.

Great tool, if used properly...however, we all know that there may be those who will use this as a way of double ending a listing and sellers who will not understand and think that there property is actually being advertised.

In the "old-new" days of the web-based MLS, realtors could remove a property from the MLS and place it back on where the days would start over. A couple of years ago, due to a tremendous amount of over-use, the rules were changed. If a realtor wishes to remove a listing from MLS due to the count of DOM, MLS states that it must remain off the MLS for 7 days and a new listing agreement must be signed. This has cut down a little on the over-use of this feature. When the listing is re-entered, a new MLS number is attached but in the background under "history" a realtor can view how many times the property has been listed, re-listed and the accumulative DOM for each listing. When gathering information for stat purposes, it is the final listing data that is reported not a summation of all the entries.

Personally, I do not feel that the DOM reflects our inventory and should not be used as stats due to all of these exceptions. How does your MLS handle DOM as well as any other exceptions? Is it just me or do you also see potential problems and the inaccuracies?

Gena Riede, Remax Gold